Before taking off in celebration of the New Year, I thought I’d share a few nuggets of information that we’ve come across recently…

Various websites continue to forecast which games they’re pumped to play in 2008. The staff at CVG have put up a list titled “2008’s Essential PS3 Games,” which includes Fallout 3. It’s nice to see the game make the list with such great company (MGS 4, LittleBigPlanet, and GTA IV were among some of the other games that made the cut). Discussing Fallout 3, they wrote:

“So what Fallout 3 is multiplatform? A new project from the developer of the brilliant Oblivion deserves its place here regardless. A sequel in a PC RPG series, Fallout 3 presents players with a free-roaming, post-apocalyptic world littered with mutants and mangled structures.”

Also looking ahead to 2008, the Times of India have joined the list of folks eager to get their hands on Fallout 3. Check out their “Eight to play in 2008″ preview here.

Meanwhile, in Elder Scrolls-related news, PS Fanboy announced their “Best of 2007″ award winners and named Oblivion the year’s “Best RPG.”

Last but not least, Famitsu has released sales numbers for the top 50 Xbox 360 titles since the console was released in Japan. Oblivion ranked #6 despite being released less than six months ago.

Reader Comments

Anyone NOT at least interested in Fallout 3 either isn’t paying attention or has no sense of gaming history.

While it’s possible for any game with high expectations to ultimately disappoint ([cough] Lair [cough] Advent Rising [cough] Dark Messiah of Might and Magic [cough] Hellgate: London [cough]), the combination of the Fallout legacy and the track record of Bethesda with the single-player RPG certainly should give any gamer over twelve years old the delicious hope that Fallout 3 could possibly end up being a perfect storm of gaming.

Fallout 3 aside, here are my own personal hopes for the next Elder Scrolls game:

That it will have all of the strengths of Morrowind (startling game world size, insane variety of environments with wonderfully alien architecture and landscapes, an atmosphere of strangeness in which anything could happen) with none of that game’s weaknesses (underachieving interface, especially regarding inventory and quest log, listless NPCs, lack of urgency to main quest, open-endedness ultimately overwhelming).

Likewise, in the new game I’d like to see the virtues of Oblivion (fall-down-on-the-floor gorgeousness, tighter structure, generally a feeling of greater accessibility) while leaving behind its failings (extreme sameness to the lovely forested environments, horrible horrible HORRIBLE decision to scale monster levels with the player, and repetitiveness of Oblivion gate-closing chores).